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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42951
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42951
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm not sure that gender diversity directly makes you more marketable to a certain gender.

You are already aware of certain points, so I'm gonna skip the very valuable advice "if it feels forced, don't do it" and the equally valuable "don't maim your plot for the sake of making it more marketable".

You mentioned that your book will probably be published under the YA umbrella term. Sure enough, it's probably good for a young reader to have a character he can identify with of the same gender.

Yet, **genre** and **theme** are more important than gender diversity when it comes down to marketing a book. There are plenty of male characters in the Twilight saga, for instance, yet it is clearly marketed at girls.

A lot of japanese medias have an overabundance of female characters, while being marketed at a male audience (yet, I feel like I am cheating here; at the moment I can't recall a female-dominated book marketed at boys, putting mangas aside).

There is an underlying assumption in the market that boys will be interested in your classic action and adventure stories, while girls will read anything that has romance in it. _I personally think it's stereotypical crap,_ yet the assumption is still valid in the publishing market.

If you want to make your book more accessible to boys, it's probably better to discuss it with your editor and with whoever will be in charge of marketing it. Your publishing house will probably come up with a strategy to advertise your book, and they could even ask you to change details in the story accordingly.

So, all things considered, it's better to finish the story you want to tell now and worry about that later.

Original score: 6